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Bootstraps Aren’t Enough

By the time they start kindergarten, children from professional families hear 19 million more words than working-class kids.

W. BRADFORD WILCOX

March 11, 2015 6:55 p.m. ET

Amid all the debate over American income inequality, a bigger threat to fairness and social cohesion has gone unrecognized: namely, the widening divide between haves and have-nots when it comes to nurturing children and preparing them for adulthood. In “Our Kids,” Robert D. Putnam, the author of “Bowling Alone” (2000), a best seller about the decline of American civic life, argues that children’s access to the core institutions that foster their development—strong families, strong schools, strong communities—is increasingly separate and unequal.